Alexis Lopez, who appeared on the first season of American Idol five years ago, was among the employees of a California restaurant that was held up at gunpoint this weekend.

The robbery occurred late Saturday night / early Sunday morning at an IHOP on Devonshire Street in Granada Hills, California. Officer Billy Joe of the Los Angeles police’s Devonshire Station said that the armed robber hid inside the restaurant before they closed for the night.

Not all titles featured on BuddyTV are available through Amazon Prime.

While all the customers had left, several employees, Lopez among them, were still inside, and were forced to lie down or kneel while the gunman threatened them, after which he escaped with hundreds of dollars in cash.

Alexis Lopez afterward told a camera crew at the scene that the gunman had held a gun to her head, and went on explain how it all happened from her point of view:

"I had finished counting the money, then I was walking in the back, and right when I passed the stairs, he came down with a gun, held it against my face, said ‘open the safe,’ snatched the money out of my hand, shut off the light.”

“He kept demanding the combination to the safe and I told him I didn't have it,” said Lopez, who’d only been working there a short time.

"I said ‘Shoot me, I don't have it.’ Then he put the gun at my forehead and all that ran through my mind and I was on American Idol at 17, I'm ready to come out with my album and he's holding a gun at my head.”

(You’ve got to admire how Lopez managed to fit in a plug for her apparent upcoming album as well as a mention of her long-ago appearance on American Idol, after such a traumatic incident.)